Randolph woman remembered for her work bringing MIAs home

Thursday

Friends and family of Maureen Dunn gathered at St. Mary’s Church Wednesday, May 15, to remember the Randolph woman who spent her life dedicated to reuniting military MIAs to their loved ones.

The organization she founded, National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, has led to the return of the remains of hundreds of American soldiers, something Dunn had been deprived of her entire life.

Her husband, Joseph Dunn I, was shot down over the South China Sea near Hainan Island on Feb. 14, 1968.

Friends and family of Maureen Dunn gathered at St. Mary’s Church Wednesday, May 15, to remember the Randolph woman who spent her life dedicated to reuniting military MIAs to their loved ones.

The organization she founded, National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, has led to the return of the remains of hundreds of American soldiers, something Dunn had been deprived of her entire life.

Her husband, Joseph Dunn I, was shot down over the South China Sea near Hainan Island on Feb. 14, 1968.

Joseph Dunn III said he misses his grandmother dearly and recalled good times they shared together.

“Every time I saw her, she had a new story,” he said.

Dunn’s son, Joseph Dun II, also known as Joe-D, said his mother did not want a sentimental eulogy.

“I feel like words can’t describe my mom,” he said.

Instead, he read an excerpt from a letter she wrote to her husband after he had been missing for four months.

In it she wrote, “Joe-D and I love you and think about you constantly. We known somehow, somewhere, you will return to us.”

“My mother always waited for my dad,” Joe-D said.

During the services, Fr. Ronald Coyne, said Dunn stood by the wedding vows she gave to her husband at a Jamaica Plain Church in 1965.

“She said that day, ‘I will love you, not only until your death, Joe, but mine,’” he said.

Coyne said he knew Maureen Dunn loved the town, and she could been seen driving around the streets with the license plate ‘Lt. Dunn.’”

In 1980, she became the first woman elected to the town’s Board of Selectmen, on which she served for nine years. She was also a member of the town’s former design review board and planning board.

She co-wrote a book on her life and her fight, “The Search for Canasta 404: Love, Loss and the POW-MIA Movement” with Washington reporter Melissa B. Robinson. The title comes from the call sign for her husband’s plane.

In recent years, she had been working on the construction of a national POW-MIA memorial in Boston. She was also strong supporter of The Achilles Project, which brings amputee veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to Boston each April to compete in the Boston Marathon.

Information from the Patriot Ledger was used in this story.

Teresa Franco Verity may be reached at tfranco@wickedlocal.com or follow her on Twitter at @TeresaFranco_WL.